NASA and Houston

“The heart of NASA’s human spaceflight program lies in Texas at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Named for our nation’s 36th president, the complex sits in the midst of 1,600 acres on the southeast edge of Houston’s city limits. The center opened in 1961 as the Manned Spacecraft Center to house the workforce that would develop the spacecraft, train the astronauts and support our nation’s efforts to land a man on the moon and safely return him to Earth by the end of the decade. The center’s original mission has expanded to include programs with long-duration spaceflights, involving international partners, and preparing for America’s next great leaps in human spaceflight. As part of this ongoing evolution, NASA constructed world-class facilities to provide unique opportunities to meet the challenges and objectives associated with the agency’s goals.”

More from the article’s section on Houston’s Johnson Space Center: “Other Johnson facilities contain a treasure trove of 800 pounds of lunar materials returned from the moon between 1969 and 1972. These lunar samples continue to be studied today by scientists from around the world. Originally housed in the center’s Lunar Receiving Laboratory, the materials were moved in 1979 to the Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility, a virtually indestructible two-story facility under the direction of the center’s Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office. Along with the lunar samples, the office maintains four other collections of extraterrestrial samples, including meteorites from Antarctica, cosmic dust collected in the stratosphere, solar wind samples collected by the Genesis spacecraft, and interstellar and cometary dust samples collected during the recent Stardust mission.”